Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [87]
“He pretty much groped me,” she says, remembering. “I didn’t know what to think. My heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. I was overwhelmed. He came on like Godzilla.”
She stepped back until his hands dropped away, and then they were both embarrassed. “Well,” he said, and then seemed at a loss for words. “Gee,” she murmured. But she loved this “Memphis Flash.”
“I was on the same page with him. We were both young and riding the rock-and-roll wave.”
Just about then, the door opened, and in came a gaggle of reporters to ask him questions. Kay stood back and watched, thinking what a chameleon Elvis was, “slipping casually out of one skin and into another, depending on the nature of the question asked or who was doing the asking.” Then one reporter asked Elvis if he planned to marry.
“Why buy a cow when you can milk it through the fence?” he said, a comment that would be picked up by the national press and spark outrage, even as it was toned down to, “Why buy a cow when you can get milk under the fence?” But he was so charming, breaking into a boyish laugh, that he won over whoever happened to be around. Kay had to admit that his appeal, while intoxicating, was complex. He was so pretty, so androgynous, and he seemed both angelic and thuggish at the same time. Later, she read what a fan told one of the reporters that night—that she liked him “because he looks so mean.” She knew what the girl meant. He was just so many emotions wrapped up in one big gorgeous cover.
Suddenly, Elvis saw Kay standing in the corner and motioned for her to come over. Then before she knew what was happening, he grabbed her, turned her around, and pulled her toward him until her back was pressed up against him. He folded her into his arms and held her in a suggestive embrace, kissing the side of her face as photographers snapped away.
Kay didn’t know anything about a girlfriend named Barbara Hearn waiting for him in Memphis. Nor did she know one of the pictures would wind up on the cover of a national magazine. She just couldn’t believe what was happening. Now, she says, “He should have been under freaking arrest. He’s feeling me up in that one picture. Those are some of the most blatantly, sensual poses that I’ve ever seen him in with a girl.”
He kissed her passionately just before he went onstage, pushing against her in a way no boy had ever done before. Then he launched into the first of two shows before six thousand deafening fans, following, among other performers, Wanda Jackson, to whom Elvis had only recently given his man’s diamond ring. Afterward, before the second show, he asked Kay if she would come to his performance in Fort Worth later that week. She said she would and asked him to sign some photos for the fans. Then he introduced her to Scotty, Bill, and D. J. and motioned for her to stand beside the backstage curtain so she could get an intimate view of the show.
In her brief exchange with Scotty, the guitarist had asked if she planned her own career in show business. Kay laughed and said that she was no singer, but she could dance. And then, caught up in the moment, she announced that she’d be moving to their music in just a few minutes.
Elvis had no idea that she was an accomplished dancer, and that listening to Hank Ballard and “Sexy Ways,” she’d improvised on the current dance steps, melding together the white from rock and the black from bop for a routine uniquely her own. She was so good at it, in fact, that within two years, she would earn a starring role in a Hollywood B picture, Rock, Baby, Rock It, doing the dance she called the “Rock & Bop.”
Now, during Elvis’s performance of “Money, Honey,” Kay began dancing her bop in the wings. She was lost in her own moment for a while, but then in the instrumental break, she noticed Elvis, Scotty, Bill, and even D. J. watching her. When Elvis came offstage, he had just one question for her: “Where did you